In Defense of Typists

Last September 1st, STARweek contributor Virginia Benitez Licuanan celebrated her 85th birthday. A grand celebration came two weeks later, when the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings (appropriately called ALIWW) last Monday formally installed Tita Ginny’s writings into its archives. I want to stress that it is her writings–and not her–that were installed into the archives, for Tita Ginny’s place is in her garden (with towering trees, bushes a-bloom and waterfalls), on the ballroom dance floor, at the mahjong table, at her typewriter or in bed with yellow pad and pencil in hand...anywhere but the archives. I have often told Tita Ginny that when I grow up I want to be like her, 85-going-on-18, who sends naughty and intriguing e-mails, who plans with infectious excitement one remodelling project after another (before the waterfalls-es–there are two, you see–was a meditation garden, and before that was a Japanese room), who writes every single day (she is currently working on a historical novel, which she claims will be her last, but I doubt that very much, given her discipline and the bottomless store of information and ideas in her head), who will invite you over with promise of "the best apple pie in town".

The ceremony was quintessentially Tita Ginny–ma-drama, ma-bongga, perfectly staged, sentimental, delightful and full of love. I was rather intimidated by the gathering of grande dames, resplendent in their ternos, maria claras and baro’t sayas, the remaining who’s who of that generation when ladies of style would never be caught dead wearing anything off-the-rack (a.k.a. RTW), or without complimentary accessories and hair properly coiffed.

Her poetry and other writings, as well as things written of and to her, were read by people hand-picked by Tita Ginny for their "sentimental value". Put together in one program, one realizes yet again what a wonderful, gifted writer she is. From her prize-winning 1937 poem "Girl from the Tropics" (read by Sonia Roco) to the sentimental "To a Very Young Bride" written for her long-running (20 years) Style magazine in 1963 (read by Dee Marquez Litchfield eye-catching in a fuschia Ramon Valera terno made for Tita Ginny 50 years ago and accompanied by a mini-fashion show of Pitoy Moreno wedding gown, complete with dashing groom, blushing bride and bridesmaid); from her mischievous children’s verses (read by painter Phyllis Zaballero) to a perfectly rhymed translation in iambic pentameter of Rizal’s Mi Ultimo Adios (read by Armando Baltazar), to an excerpt from her millennium series for The Philippine STAR on "Doña Juana, Queen of Cebu" (read by Chitang Nakpil, with a parade by "Doña Juana" a.k.a. granddaughter Andrea Peterson, costumed by Roy Gonzales of the couture house of R.T. Paras, and three attendants bearing her hats), the gathering of friends basked in the light and delight of Tita Ginny’s special way with words.

In her response, Tita Ginny revealed that, according to her mother, the renowned writer Paz Marquez Benitez, journalists–among whose number Tita Ginny counts herself–are not writers but typists. However, she points out, "being officially admitted by ALIWW into its ranks as a Woman Writer, now at age 85, I am no longer just a woman who likes to write...I am a writer! At last!"

Fortunately for the rest of us typists, Tita Ginny put forth a fine defense of journalists. With a generous amount of vested interest, I am sharing here her defense of our chosen profession of deadlines and meteoric stress levels, of late nights and cancelled appointments.

"Unlike literary writers, we journalists do not have the luxury of time. Unlike literary writers, we cannot pause and ponder and polish and write and re-write for weeks, months and sometimes years.

"We write about real people and actual facts–unlike literary writers we are not allowed to invent, imagine or imbellish. A vivid imagination in a fiction writer is an admirable talent. In a journalistic writer it is a grievous sin. We write under pressure against a deadline in a matter of a few hours, sometimes even minutes. We write under compulsion–not of the Muse, but of that ever-impending deadline which, for journalists, is said to be the greatest inspiration of all.

"But actually, the most inspiring thing for us journalists is the ever present thought that what we write will be read within the next 24 hours by thousands of people all over the country. That instant and widespread readership is our true impelling inspiration. Reader reaction is our real reward. Always, we write with you readers very much in mind. Your reaction is of utmost importance to us.

"If even for one moment we have made you laugh or made you shed a tear, if we have made you angry, if we have made you feel good, if we have answered your questions or made you ask them, if we have moved you to act on something or kept you from acting on it, if we made you remember or for a moment forget...

"Then, dear friends, we have written for you... I have written for you practically all my life, and it is you–all of you who have read me–who have made this typist–a writer."